TNAG-0162-FCO40-198-Export-of-textiles-to-Norway-and-Sweden-1969 — Page 61

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generate considerable public interest. If we had not kept the

present consultations from the press, you would have been met at

the airport by correspondents of all the leading English and Chinese

You would most certainly at sometime during

language newspapers.

your stay been invited to appear on radio and television.

At this point I would like to slip in a word about

industrial advisers. On the whole, as you know, we do not welcome

the presence of industrial advisers in substantive negotiations

because they inhibit what we can say. Our own people fully under-

stand and accept this. Nevertheless, we fully appreciate the

reasons why you would like your advisers to attend. I hope that the

compromise, based on the practice in London, I proposed to the

Consul-General will be acceptable to you. We have made provision

for industrial advisers, both yours and ours, to be present at the

two sessions of the Statistical Group or Sub-Committee for which the

programme provides. If you would like your advisers to be on hand

during the Working Sessions, I can easily put a room in this building

at their disposal. Our idea is that, as in London, we should use the

meetings of the Statistical Group to go fully into the facts of the

case for restraint on particular items.

Where the facts will lead us, I find difficult to assess.

•

This is

We summarised our present views in our Note of 30th July, in reply

to yours of July the 22nd. Since then we have more up-to-date export

figures. In general they show a marked decline for all the items on

which you are seeking restraint, including the cotton ones.

most unusual, and from my point of view I might say, a depressing

development. Usually, in spite of our best endeavours, some rumour

of the possibility of controls escapes and, though we have said

nothing about your present visit, it did become known in Hong Kong

some months ago that we had had some talks with you about possible

export restraints. In this sort of situation, we usually find an

The fact

increase in exports anticipating closing of the doors.

that this has not happened, and that the trend has actually been in

/the opposite

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